Zoho Review

OVERALL RATING:4

Zoho CRM is a good choice for small businesses that wish to get up and running on a CRM software for a very low price. Despite the relative affordability, Zoho CRM doesn't skimp on the key features organizations need to automate across sales, marketing, and customer service processes.

THE GOOD

Time-saving design:

The Zoho CRM system is set up in a way that limits the amount of clicks necessary to perform any given action in a module. Customizing and setting up a workflow is simple to do once you go through a few iterations of creating one. There's an automation section under Setup that enables you to establish workflows and create assignment rules for several business processes and tasks, which is a great timesaver in the long run.

Dynamic and usable reporting:

The reports module contains a variety prebuilt reports that you can run in real time or schedule for later. In addition, you can create your own reports and export any of your reports in Excel, CSV, or PDF. Another useful feature is the ability to create different types of charts, such as bar, pie, funnel, or line. You get a pictorial representation of your custom reports in one view through the dashboards module. The charts are built with Adobe Flash technology, which displays the data dynamically. Another strong feature is the ability to drill down into any chart. You can click on the chart and it directs you to the relevant data set, which helps you analyze results more efficiently and identify specific areas of improvement.

Strong inventory management features:

Zoho CRM equips you with what you need to manage your products, price books, vendors, sales quotes, orders, and invoices to round out your entire sales cycle. You can create and send quotes to accounts, contacts, or opportunities directly from the CRM, or you can print or create a PDF file. Converting a quote to a sales order or invoice can then be done through the click of a button. These tools are time-saving and tremendously convenient.

Mobile access enabled:

You can essentially access your Zoho CRM account from any mobile device as long as you have an Internet connection. You can access all of your data offline and synchronize with your CRM later through an iPad, iPhone, Android phone, or BlackBerry. Key features include the ability log inbound and outbound calls, send emails, and view, add, or delete records.

Built-in social CRM:

Zoho CRM offers the ability to engage with your contacts through Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all from within your account. You get real-time insight into updates, activities, and interests of both current and potential customers and are able to directly partake in these conversations, which helps you stay engaged with your customers at all times.

Solid support options and resources:

Email and live chat are available to all customers, and phone support, remote assistance, and customer portal access are available for paid customers. Email response time for free edition users is two business days, while paid customers receive a response within 24 hours, Monday through Friday. You can also access CRM Resources, which contains a user guide, an API guide, videos, a knowledge base, FAQs, and a blog that covers a wide range of topics from the CRM team at Zoho, its partners, and the user community.

Inexpensive CRM with quick deployment:

Zoho is one of the lowest-priced, full-featured CRM products on the market today. This is especially a great value for small businesses. The application is very user-friendly and you can be up and running in just a matter of days.

THE BAD

Limited marketplace for third-party integration:

Zoho makes a variety of its own apps that you can easily integrate with your CRM, including tools for project management, email management, and chat. However, if you're looking for more powerful applications to supplement your CRM, you won't find much, as there's really only a handful of add-ons specifically for productivity and collaboration available from Zoho's marketplace. You most likely have to use the Developer API to integrate other applications if needed.

THE DETAILS

Details

Contract Agreement

Annual, Month to Month

Data Storage

512MB - 1GB/user, 1GB/org

Free Trial

15 days

Monthly Rate

$0 - $50/user

Number of Users

1 - Unlimited

FEATURES

Title

Customer Support Automation

Case Management You can create, track, and manage customer cases.

Email-to-Case You can capture a customer case from email.

Solutions You can create, view, and manage solutions used to solving customer cases.

Web-to-Case You can capture a customer case online through web forms on your website.

Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) is enabled for this product. At a minimum, this allows you to manage incoming and outgoing calls.

Knowledge Base You can publish a knowledge base to contain solutions to be shared with users in your organization and customers.

Self-Service Portal You can provide online support for your customers through a self-service portal.

Service Contracts You can create, track, and manage service contracts - which is an agreement between you and your customers.

Marketing Automation

Campaign Cloning You can easily clone or copy an existing marketing campaign.

Campaigns You can plan, create, track, and manage marketing campaigns through the CRM application.

CRM Plus

Comparable

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With 15+ years of digital- and direct-marketing experience, Stacy has been a strong contributor to Reviews.com since June of 2013. Stacy contributes to the CRM software reviews, one of the most popular categories on Reviews.com.

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